Aurora, Colorado
A Community Impact Story
Visit Aurora: Creating Pride and Awareness Through Community Stories
Social Impact Framework: Community Representation and Engagement
What is the issue you were trying to address?
Visitors want to live like a local when traveling to a new destination. They want to find businesses with a story and people they can relate to. We created this series to celebrate these minority-owned businesses and give them a voice.
What were the stated objectives of this initiative?
- Increase awareness of Aurora's diverse businesses
- Drive traffic/ sales
- Generate pride in our community
What were the specific metrics you used to measure the success of your efforts?
To measure success, we evaluated reporting from social media channels: views, engagement, and clicks to our website. In 2024, we launched our new brand video on 3 local stations in Colorado for brand awareness. We also work closely with the business owners if they are observing additional foot traffic.
What were the specific outcomes and results of your efforts?
In 2024 we launched a campaign, Meet Your Neighbor. We created ads on Meta with a profile photo of the business owner and their business. This engagement has actually increased with the amount of marketing dollars we've put behind it. Residents love to see their favorite business owner promoted on social media. Many are asking where they are located or saying that they need to make a visit.
We now have 30 content creators who partner with us to promote the city of Aurora. This helped rapidly increase our engagement and tell more stories of Aurora during the last two quarters of the year. Media outlets picked up more than 20 stories on our destination and continue to request more information to curate stories.
Is there any other information you'd like to share, including any best practices or key lessons learned?
Find a passionate business owner with a unique story. When posting the video on social media, the call to action should lead them back to your website, where they can find a blog with other minority-owned businesses.
